Thursday, February 9, 2012

dance party! // our (DIY) wedding playlist

A while back, I asked you guys for help in composing our wedding playlist. In the DIY spirit of our wedding, Robbie and I had decided to compile our favorite songs (and then some), and to use our trusty iPad to act as DJ. We'd mentioned that we didn't want too many traditional or stereotypically "wedding" songs, and that our goal was a nice eclectic mix of slower/meaningful songs and songs that would make our guests get their groove on. You guys were so awesome, your suggestions rocked (pun absolutely intended), and we ended up using quite a few of your recommendations mixed in with our choices! And now, four months after our big day, I decided it was time to share the final playlist with you.

I'll confess - sharing this playlist wasn't quite as easy as I'd anticipated. I had no luck finding any sort of website or program that would allow me to just upload the playlist from my iPad, save it, and embed it in a blog post for easy access to my readers. (Does this even exist? If anyone knows if/how this is possible, please share the deets!) So I set up a Grooveshark account and manually searched for our songs, one by one. Unfortunately, there were a whole bunch of them that weren't available - including anything by the good ole' Beatles, who were heavily featured throughout our ceremony and reception. Then Grooveshark decided it hated me and stopped saving new songs I was adding. 129 songs added, 22 songs actually saved. After spending waaaaay too much time trying to win a losing battle, I broke up with Grooveshark and shacked up with Playlist.com. This proved to be much better, although by that point I was burned out and still couldn't find all of our songs.

In the end, I figured my best bet was to share this mini version of our playlist via Playlist.com's player, so that you guys could at least listen to a sample of the goodness. Below the player you'll also find a list of our pre-ceremony and ceremony songs, in addition to some of my favorites from the reception (some included on the Playlist.com player, some not). Not exactly what I was aiming for, but I suppose it'll do.

As for our music choices, Robbie and I are in lucky in that we share an incredibly similar taste in music. When looking over our playlist, we came to the conclusion that the fact that we both adore such unlikely combinations of bands (The Grateful Dead + Guns N' Roses + Fleet Foxes + Herb Alpert + Johnny Cash = Very Odd Combo) must mean we are definitely meant to be.

Awesome playlist! My boyfriend and I also like weird combinations of music/bands as well. I think it makes life more interesting when you can listen to multiple genres, especially with the songs mixed into one playlist. =)

ok missy! you've officially been the highlight of my [slower than usual] Thursday in my office here at work! Your blog is not only stunning, but also inspiring!! I just got engaged two weeks ago & i was so excited to see your creative wedding pictures & blog beaming with wedding DIY... not to mention your love of things i'm guilty of swooning over as well.

one of the things i'm most exciting about is the wedding playlist, yours is filled with so many we both love ♥

Yes! I love that it was so non-traditional (not that I ever doubted you). It's not often you see Bon Iver on a wedding playlist, but it totally suits you. We did some non-traditional tunes, too:

For the pre-ceremony and processional, we did a bunch of songs that were piano only. It was a mix of classical pieces and songs from musicals. The room we were in had perfect acoustics for a piano, so I wanted to take advantage.

During the ceremony a friend sang a cover of "I Cross My Heart," which was originally a country song, but we switched it up to be less twangy.

The recessional was "Make Me Smile" by Chicago, and our first dance was "Your Precious Love" by Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell.

The piano mix sounds amazing (I freaking love musicals). And Chicago is such an awesome band that I feel like is so underrated. My husband's band covered them on NYE and it was one of my favorite performances they've ever down. All of your choices sound fabulous!

Love, love, love all of your music (especially Journey Don't STop Believing. It's my one of my favorites). Kudos for picking out the music yourself! You don't need to pay someone to do this. I'm sorry that it took you so long to upload the playlist but you did a great job!

So great to come across this! We are working on ours right now and it is proving alot harder than I expected. We have until July so I just keeping adding to my list as i hear or think of of a goody....super cool playlist inspiration :)

Love your DIY wedding playlist! I've been with my boyfriend for four years, and we're not even engaged yet, but I've always known that I want to put together my own wedding playlist because (1) Music has always played such a huge, meaningful role in my life and (2) I'm a huge playlist snob in general, so I can't even imagine having someone else decide what music is played on one of the most important days of my life.